The Roman emperor Hadrian renamed the province of Judea to 'Palestina' after the Philistines, an ancient enemy of the Israelites. This was a deliberate act to sever the connection between the Jewish people and their land following a failed rebellion, an ancient example of political rebranding with modern implications.
The brutality of the October 7th attacks and the subsequent reaction on Western campuses created a 'phase shift' for many Jews. It shattered a sense of security and complacency that had developed in the West, reawakening a feeling of isolation and geopolitical precariousness for the Jewish people.
A key element of settler colonialism is extracting resources for a home empire. Judge Roy Altman argues this framework is inapplicable to Israel, as there is no metropole benefiting from its existence. The Jewish people, as Golda Meir quipped, have nowhere else to go.
Author Roy Altman applies a legal principle to historical debates: evidence, like an ancient stele mentioning 'Israel,' is more reliable if it was created thousands of years before the modern Zionist dispute arose, removing any incentive for fabrication.
DNA studies reveal that Iraqi and Iranian Jewish populations are the most genetically distant from other global Jewish communities. This divergence dates back approximately 2,500 years, aligning perfectly with the historical and archaeological records of the Babylonian Exile, when a portion of the Jewish population remained in Persia.
While claims of indigeneity are debated, the Jewish people in Israel use the same language, religion, and naming conventions, and inhabit the same land as their ancestors 3,000 years ago. Altman argues this provides a more continuous and holistic claim to indigeneity than that of European descendants in North America.
The Palestinian claim has evolved from denying the existence of a Jewish kingdom (as Arafat did at Camp David) to a new theory that modern Jews descend from Khazar converts. Roy Altman notes this shift and argues the latter claim has been thoroughly disproven by extensive genetic studies.